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dragonrajafanfiction · 4 years ago

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So uhm, Ruri if it's not a problem 🧍(for the writing thingy)

Hop House, Jazz Club, L.A.

The club was tucked in the middle of a historic Los Angeles neighborhood, dimly lit by sputtering street lamps. In the alley, black garbage bags sheltered three homeless people who peered out at the long 90s era tan and blue-grey Buicks that rolled up, flashing white stripes on their tires. Old black men in their seventies, wearing sharp suits, ties and fedoras got out in groups of three and four, loudly laughing at the lively conversations they were having in the car. The door was left open for them and they were invited inside, removing their hats and tossing their coats over their shoulder.

The Hop House should have been labeled as a historic building by the city metrics, but history was written by people other than the owners of this place. Signed photos of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Charlie Parker decorated the walls. These men eulogized in movies and popular culture, but the men filing in now had come to pay homage to their actual persons. In their seventies, eighties, and nineties, some could even boast that they’d heard these legends in person. From a young age, they’d came to the Hophouse to listen to jazz, drink beer and strong spirits, smoke liberally and listen to some of the finest musicians the world had to offer.

At this point, it was almost a private club. They put out no advertisements, there was no sign beyond the plain street address, there was no schedule for the artists. If you knew where the place was and who tended to play there, that meant that you were part of the club’s history. The audience’s wrinkled and mole-spotted faces was their price of admission.

To receive an invitation from this club was just as legendary. They were simply phone calls asking for a name, “Are you so-and-so?” Then they explained that they saw them play in person at some venue. And it was always in-person. The bookie was too ancient to bother learning how to use the internet. The invitation was “We’d would like you to play at the hop house at such-and-such a day and time. Don’t be late.”

At the very mention of the Hop House, those who knew or who bothered to investigate would understand what an honor this was, that they would be playing on a stage that hosted the legends of jazz before people who grew up with jazz and could appreciate it. They trembled like athletes before the Olympic trials. Just being invited was an honor that only an idiot would refuse…

You were no idiot. You walk into the open door and the smell of sweet cigar tobacco, blended with menthol cigarettes and booze. The carpet was bright red and gold despite the constant pollution that rained down on it every night. There were white covered tables stuffed into every available space, but the waiters and waitresses navigated the network of gaps with practiced ease, dressed in tight tuxedo vests and bow ties, their hair slicked and pinned back. Walking in here was like walking into a time machine and immediately you feel transported back to the 1930s.

The men who walked in before you had already taken their seats, pulled out a weathered deck of cards and started shuffling them without so much as breaking a pause in their conversation. Then they dealt out a quick hand for a round of spades.

“Yo, Piano. Over here.”

You turn. A man was dressed in a well fitted black suit, his coiled salt and pepper hair mounded like a cloud on his head. He looked slender and had bright dark brown eyes. This was the bookie and though aged at 87, he looked more like a man in his fifties. He smiled with bright straight teeth. You remembered that he was at a concert of yours, seated in the front row as you played your set. You felt empowered, on fire as you had set yourself into the melody. Your fingers tickled up and down the piano, but the ones to react were your audience who whooped and hollered. But it wasn’t enough, you teased them with a brief key change and dove back into the melody with a vengeance, like pulling them into a fierce kiss.

The audience screamed with glee and you had to play louder to be heard over them. This man had looked at you with a stern expression the entire concert, not reacting at all. When the set had finished and you were bowing to a standing ovation, he remained seated, staring at you intensely.

That intensity stayed with you and when he told you where he was from, your heart beat further. You were not fooled by his charming smile. The Hop House expected no less than perfection out of its talent.

You’ve been playing piano as long as you can remember. Your house was hung with photos of your grandfather and great-uncles who traveled the highways playing anywhere who would pay them. Though time went on and the band broke up, the tradition of music remained in the house. Her father worked as a night repairman for the city government, yet owned a piano. It was you who sat down and picked up a piano learning book so old the pages were falling out of the staples and started to play.

Soon you were learning pieces by heart, blending them together and making your own tunes. Your father never got you any lessons, he just gave you music to learn and you learned them all by heart. It wasn’t until you were in the fifth grade that you learned that what you were playing was called Jazz. Specifically, a type of Jazz known as BeBop. Like different languages, BeBop was just one way of playing the same song. It was characterized by the manner that one note led to another. Instead of playing the tune straight, it meandered towards the notes like a river, flowing by its own intuition and internal logic. There were no ‘wrong notes’ in this kind of jazz… unless the note was wrong in your heart. If your heart was not in it, every note was the wrong note.

So there was no room for nerves, for stiffness. You knew this, and yet looking at this man, all your inborn talent and confidence seemed inadequate. He’d seen you, and hundreds of musicians just like you.

Instead of taking you to a fancy VIP room, he took you out through a weathered yellow swinging door, turning into a hallway just outside the kitchen with no lights save a sputtering bare bulb. He opened another hollow door to an office full of file cabinets and a scratched up wooden desk. There are green plastic chairs but you stay standing, watching him walk around the desk and open a drawer. “I wanted to give you this before you performed.”

He reached in and handed you a photograph.

You look at it and instantly experience a shock. In the photograph was your father and the bookie, your father at the piano, smiling in a handsome three piece suit and shining dress shoes. “He played the Hop House in 1969. He was one of the greats.”

“He … never told me he played here.” You say, in complete awe.

“That was the kind of guy he was. He played here once, and quit the jazz game all together. He said he’d never met a better audience and probably never would.”

You accept the photograph. “He died of cancer three years ago. There were a few strangers at the funeral I didn’t recognize. They were from here?”

“You can go out there and see for yourself. I couldn’t make it. But I had to at least go and see you.”

You feel a sudden weight lifted. This was no longer just an honor and a privilege to play with the greats. It was if your father had appeared from heaven to offer you a hand to come on up to take your place among the saints of music. You fill with joy, like the sun was shining on your face. “Thank you.”

The bookie grinned and he was no longer threatening. That aura was gone, the velvet rope had parted for you.

You were the VIP now.

The moment you stepped out on the stage you were the true center of attention. The tables were crammed so close you could smell the mint liqueur wafting from the drinks on them. A haze had settled over the venue. You take your seat and glance at the drummer.

You begin to play and the crowd quiets. You were tapping out a tune familiar to them. It was the tune your father liked to play “All the Things that You are.” It was a soft, sentimental tune with an almost marching band-like beat that you played around, weaving the notes like vines around an iron fence. Soon the audience was present. They had already relaxed, accepting that this young artist did know where they were going with the sound and they only had to be along for the ride, a scenic route of hills and valleys, loud and soft notes. They didn’t have to make sense to outside ears, this was music all their own.

Thus introduced you paused and then glanced at the drummer, this time rattling out notes like a freight train, but the experienced drummer knew exactly what you were putting out there and leaped in with a rapidfire beat like the chuffing of a smoke stack. The audience was now nodding their head, glancing at each other and smiling.

You’re smiling too. You felt like you could play forever. Your father was right. This was like no place you’d ever been. You’d found your people. You’d gone home. You were speaking and you were understood. There was not a single disinterested person there. You gave and they thanked you. And you just wanted to keep on giving.

Soon it was you the one whooping and hollering from a cheerful heart, launching into tune after tune. Throwing out this and that to the audience. All of your admittedly brief years of study was being laid out on the stage, since you first lifted out the wood panel cover over the keys at your childhood home and straightened the dog eared pages of the ratty piano lesson book all the way to the day.

At the end of the set, you wave to the audience and bow and they nod and hands as knotted as treebark and dangling with golden rings and you walk off the stage, head up and eyes straight. The bookie is waiting for you.

“Good job up there. Real good. In fact… there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Your heart leaps into your throat. Who could that person possibly be. “There are a few clubs over seas and we got someone who came here today and wanted to see what we had to offer. He liked you.” He was leading you backstage towards the actual performers area. The place was so small he only had to open a single door to be led to the dressing room. It was draped with old feather boas and a gaudy pink vanity crouched in one corner. All was all in dark paneling but that only served to make the person in the room seem more brilliant.

The bright red kimono they wore was long enough to rest on the floor. You’d seen this kind of kimono before in period dramas like Memoirs of a Geisha, but this was the first time you’d ever seen one in person. The dim light revealed darker colored red flowers in this pool of red silk. It covered a slender body with an elegant snatched waist and thin shoulders.

You’d seen pretty people before. Angelina Jolie with her gorgeous high cheekbones. Gal Gadot with her bright dark eyes. This person standing before you looks to be a man but you can only compare his features to beautiful women you’ve seen. His black hair is long, down his back, even though lifted in a high ponytail.

“Mr. Kazama.”

You hesitantly introduce yourself.

“You played beautifully tonight.” Mr. Kazama whispered.

You turn your head slightly as you start to hear the sounds of a long guitar coming from where you just stood.

“Your father died recently. I came to give condolences and also an invitation to play in Japan.”

“Japan?” You can barely keep your mouth open. It wasn’t enough that you had the best concert of your life. You had to stand before this stranger and accept an invitation to Japan?

“I know it may seem like too much. I’m sure you have your own concerns.”

You glance again towards the stage. This far flung place out in the middle of nowhere that held your past and had melded its way into your heart without you even knowing it. It was like this whole experience like a jazz note - unplanned and yet as full of intention and design as all of Creation. You turn back to him and smile.

“What concerns?”

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toddlazarski · 7 years ago

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Milwaukee’s Top Soup Destinations

Shepherd Express

Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire, and king of foodie know-it-alls, suggests we’d do well to adopt the eating habits of our grandparents. Seeing the difficulty in maintaining social contact after so many liverwurst sandwiches and buttermilk, or the slippery slope nature of nightly Jim Beam with Virginia Slim Menthols, or the dance with the cholesterol test after adhering to daily scrambled eggs cooked with copious goops of sheeny Velveeta, sided by mounded bacon piles, rye toast with silver dollar dollops of shimmering Land o’ Lakes - all before the dessert donuts - for some of us, this advice is not so easy. Or wise.

But there are applicable, timeless, intergenerational universals: comforting coffee all day long, chicken wings and pizza with football viewing, and grandma’s answer for most of life’s calorie time quandaries: soup. Chicken noodle if you’re sick. Tomato if you’re pretending to be sick, playing hooky, and eating grilled cheese. Minestrone at the Italian place. Clam chowder before a fish fry. Any or all varietals if it’s cold outside, or rainy. But mostly, if you’re sick. Or were just sick. Or for strength to prevent becoming sick.

Had grandma been viable and stirring in the age of Yelp, in the days of iPhone-emboldened food journey’s, that nagging search for hearty throat assuagement may have led to a more worldly bouillon. Pho, ramen, menudo - Generation Food Channel’s options are endless for the hoary notion of getting “something warm on your stomach.” So as we enter the final throes - maybe, hopefully, probably not but maybe - of cold weather, of flu season, of needing to bundle up, wear your hat and mittens, it may be time for a quick, summary rundown of the city’s best hot bowls of slurpable, sinus-clearing comfort. These are not exactly your grandmother’s bowl of soup, but any can offer a sipping spoonful act to make her proud.

6. Red Light Ramen

In the days of Trump tax cuts, it can be tough to celebrate something so blatantly too rich. But that really seems to be the main pleasure point of the Milwaukee vanguard of the quite hip ramen movement. Salty, luxuriant, egg-bobbing, noodle-swimming, with pork aplenty, ripe for both a spoon and chopstick forays, it is ancient Eastern exotic and yet as intrinsically comforting as Campbell’s. Whatever your selection of the multitude types, or whether you stand on the too much or just right camp, there’s no arguing that no bowl is a better preface for a long winter’s nap.

5. Pho Viet

Rick Bayless once suggested the best taquerias are the ones attached to Mexican grocery stores. Following that logic, the best pho in town should likely come from the little shop next to Pacific Produce, the gargantuan emporium of all foods Asian on South 27th Street. It’s hard to dispute the argument while getting a hearty tongue bath: from the dozen pho options, liquid-housing the daunting gamut between steak, flank, tripe, tendon, brisket, maybe shrimp, possibly chicken, of course meatballs; to the handful of egg noodle bowls, starring quail eggs or duck legs, it's hard to do anything but keep going, slurping greedily and noisily, splashing and basting buds with flavors fresh and deep and peculiar, rife with star anise and black cardamom, other such items you’ve likely lost to the nether regions of your spice cabinet. The proper application of Thai chili garlic sauce along the fresh, seedy jalapenoes, reminds that even grandma at her most overbearing was negligent about at least one thing - a soup can, maybe should, hurt a little bit. It’s a visceral cleansing if done right. Really though, there’s no greater testament than the bahn mi here - suspiciously cheap, fresh-bunned, overstuffed, peppery and porky - being relegated to afterthought.

4. Soup Bros.

Soup Bros is actually much like a grandmother itself - the service has attitude, the home is filled with miscellany knicknacks and doodads, you call, get an automated voice telling you the mailbox hasn’t been set up, you instinctively wonder if she’s still alive. There’s no website. And there’s many soups. The cheddar and Bermuda onion seems the paradigm - extra sharp cheddar melting along fresh crushed black pepper and green onion pieces, the whole achieving that ideal creaminess to wade through toward stomach coaty contentment. Similarly pleasing is the red pepper bisque - a cold antidote and elixir properly sworn by the whole town over. The key with both seems to be that salty svelteness, a certain intangible that makes for the rare occasion of going out to lunch and feeling somehow rejuvenated after. A fresh baked bread hunk, served warm and crusty and seedy, certainly helps too. Owner Richard Regner, brusque, terse, isn’t exactly the soup Nazi, but, having said that, the place does embody the somehow idiosyncratic nature that comes with precise, artistic cooking approaches to big vats of nourishing, communal stuff. And if an armoire of his ever became available, one would be smart to scoop it up, rifle through the drawers.

3. Thai Bar-B-Que

It seems hard to go wrong with most any dish, any pho or soup, in Silver City. In fact the only fault we came away noting from an afternoon was pointed out by our waiter: “capitalism.” After hearing him bemoan the over-rushed pace of American life, we acquiesced, realized this is as good a place as any to sit and savor, soup being a dish to smell and breathe deep, as much to get down. The Thai BBQ pork noodle varietal, supposedly the only such dish in town, serves as an ideal for what they do best here. It’s a dangerously velvety, rich broth, with multitude sunken pork treasures in varying shape and cooking doneness. The pork balls are the prize, sponging flavor, buoying between onion hunks, green onion chocks, cilantro, and a Medusa nest of glassy noodles. But any meat and broth would do well when supplanted by the accompanying death panel: a four jar tray of pickled jalapenos, the ubiquitous Thai chili garlic sauce, crushed dried chili peppers cooked to a deep viscous brown in oil, and the same chili peppers, simply ground and ready for battle with sinus and lips. Even in moderation, it can feel like a concoction just barely, pleasantly this side of hell. It’s okay to drip a little sweat right into the bowl - it can count as the day’s exercise. Better yet, forget such energetic American worries, sit back, and enjoy the otherworld pleasure all about National and 30th.

2. El Cabrito

The ‘little goat’ butters its bolillo by specializing in meats slow-cooked in sauces, blurring the line between stews and soft bits meant for stuffing into corn tortillas for makeshift juicy tacos. You can tell the specialty from what everybody is ordering, and from the neon sign shouting their wares rooted in the state of Jalisco - birria. It is celebratory, spicy, slow-cooked goat meat. It’s a tad gamey, and it’s game to go either way - slurp or fork. But it’s actually the heartening pozole that lands Cabrito here, as it leaves no doubt as to the spoon-forward nature. The stop sign-red broth comes with an oily sheen, equally salty and piquant, made more spicy by the dangerous ground arbol pepper canister placed on the table like a dare, one hard to turn away from. Floating below the surface are thumb-sized chunks of pork, al dente-texture hominy, both slow cooking as you focus on the broth, the meat getting speared and breaking up with each penetration, so that at the end you are left with shredded pig particles to spoon onto the accompanying tostadas, with chopped red onion and tomato for fresh bright balance, a squirt of the smoky chipotle table salsa to make sure every nook of the tongue is tended to. You’ll also likely be left fanning your mouth, dabbing sweat driblets from the forehead, and, given the bowl depth and deep provenance, wondering why you thought it was necessary to order an accompanying taco.

1. Guadalajara

Of the many elixir qualities of a hot bowl of salty broth, hangover helper may be the most underrated. Like all chili-peppered Mexican fare, all Mexican soups do the trick - the aforementioned birria is renowned, but nothing eases day after pain like menudo. It’s a take it, leave it proposition, long bypassing ‘gamey’ labels, the beef tripe yielding an intestinal - literally - deep flavor of bloody earthiness. It’s an acquired taste, but one that can come to resemble a gastrointestinal restart button. Still, even if the palate leans understandably more gabacho, there are two types of head-clearing pozole: verde, with chicken, or the briny, salty rojo. The latter is the way to go, offering a steaming bath with tender fatty pork wedges, big soft hominy bits, ploppable diced onion, and, really, not too much else. The soothing saltiness is kept as the main star, everything satisfyingly elemental, unless you want to be heroic and scoop in some upon-request-only arbol salsa.

It’s about halfway through any bowl, pleasantly sniffling, that you might realize, like most grandmotherly caloric pushes, it’s all too much - the bowl is comically overlarge, brimming with incalculable salt, sheeny fat, too much spice - again with the ground Arbol, even sugar - sure, yes, you will need another Jarritos to wash everything down. There’s even an undeserved, overabundant kindness about the shabby corner converted Walker’s Point abode. Maybe you can’t go home again, as they say, but from the taste of a bowl here, you can go to your, or a, Mexican grandma’s house.

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